The Henry Draper Medal is awarded every 4 years by the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

"for investigations in astronomical physics". Named after

Henry Draper Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) was an American doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography. Life and work Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished doctor, ch ...

, the medal is awarded with a gift of USD $15,000. The medal was established under the Draper Fund by his widow, Anna Draper, in honor of her husband, and was first awarded in 1886 to

Samuel Pierpont Langley Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 – February 27, 1906) was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who Invention, invented the bolometer. He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a professor of a ...

"for numerous investigations of a high order of merit in solar physics, and especially in the domain of radiant energy". It has since been awarded 45 times. The medal has been awarded to multiple individuals in the same year: in 1977 it was awarded to

Arno Allan Penzias Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang t ...

and

Robert Woodrow Wilson Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936) is an American astronomer who, along with Arno Allan Penzias, discovered cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in 1964. The pair won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. While ...

"for their discovery of the cosmic microwave radiation (a remnant of the very early universe), and their leading role in the discovery of interstellar molecules"; in 1989 to

Riccardo Giovanelli Riccardo Giovanelli (August 30, 1946 – December 14, 2022) was an Italian-born American astronomer. He was an emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, United States. Background Born at Praticello, in central I ...

and

Martha P. Haynes Martha Patricia Haynes (born 24 April 1951) is an American astronomer who specializes in radio astronomy and extragalactic astronomy. She is the distinguished professor of arts and sciences in astronomy at Cornell University. in 1993 to

Ralph Asher Alpher Ralph Asher Alpher (February 3, 1921 – August 12, 2007) was an American cosmologist, who carried out pioneering work in the early 1950s on the Big Bang model, including Big Bang nucleosynthesis and predictions of the cosmic microwave backgrou ...

and

Robert Herman Robert Herman (August 29, 1914 – February 13, 1997) was an American scientist, best known for his work with Ralph Alpher in 1948–50, on estimating the temperature of cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang explosion. Biograp ...

"for their insight and skill in developing a physical model of the evolution of the universe and in predicting the existence of a microwave background radiation years before this radiation was serendipitously discovered" and in 2001 to

R. Paul Butler Robert Paul Butler (born 1960) is an astronomer and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who searches for extrasolar planets. he and his team have discovered over half of the planets found orbiting nea ...

and

Geoffrey Marcy Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berk ...

"for their pioneering investigations of planets orbiting other stars via high-precision radial velocities".

List of recipients

Source
National Academy of Sciences

References

{{National Academy of Sciences, state=collapsed Astronomy prizes Awards established in 1886 Awards of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1886 establishments in the United States

List of recipients

See also

References